From above, towns and cities and villages and parishes all look different.
All tiny, but they share the same structures.
The churches with their steeples glistening in the sun, and the schools with ballfields, tiny dots of players running like swarms of European starlings moving as one.
Jails have geometric buildings that hold plenty of people but have very little parking.
Conversely, areas of entertainment are easy to spot with their ample parking, shared lots surrounded by different venues, and they have spotlights. Not everything has spotlights. Car lots once did. They had old WWII surplus spotlights. Not anymore. Bulbs are expensive.
Industrial sections rise with smokestacks… billowing like cloud factories.
Playgrounds with their arched swing sets. Their shadows complete the circle when they touch the metal supports anchored in the ground, while the swings oscillate like a second hand, never making a full sweep.
The sources of water for a town’s needs. Still reservoirs at night that frame the moon’s reflection like wall art.
The landfills, with birds overhead making long, lazy circles above the men driving orange dinosaurs, pushing their food around.
Malls with endless parking lots, their parallel lines angling back and forth like the tracks of a downhill skier.
Cemeteries at sunset or sunrise. Long shadows cast from tombstones, like thousands of open graves.
Geography plays a role in where these towns and cities and villages and parishes set their roots.
Some sprang up near a bend in a river. Travelers stopped there for a break and never left. Decades passed, and the towns grew.
Hill towns nestle in valleys. Great mounds of earth protect them from the elements, yet funnel the rainwater through when the storms come.
Brown desert towns. Brown Earth dotted with brown buildings and brown dusty roads and brown dirty trucks that leave trails of dust behind them like the snake game.
Urban areas grew with convenience in mind. The streets form a grid. At night, looking down, red taillights mark the one-way roads of cars traveling away. The next street on the urban graph paper glows white with oncoming headlights.
Port towns stand ready with rows of skeletal arms angled to unload ships and transfer their cargo into wagons waiting beside the capillaries of railroad tracks that merge into the veins of commerce.
Regardless of the place, be it a town, a city, a village, or a parish, they always look like a little kid’s train set.
Place the trees where they belong and squeeze down a little glue to hold the gravel paths. They are tiny worlds with tiny people living their tiny lives.
From above, it’s all happiness and dreams, but it’s frozen in time. A child holding a balloon on a stick, making it look like it’s floating beside them on a still string. Another child flying a motionless kite. A dog frozen in midair, leaping for a Frisbee.
It stays the same.
We leave it behind and fly over a new tiny world.